Why was there a Stalemate?

Infantry were sent against the enemy trench in mass attacks to try and overwhelm and capture the trench.

This was incredibly difficult to achieve due to the complex and well defended trenches.

By design trenches were nearly impossible to capture, so the war dragged into stalemate as both sides dug in.

They were defended by barbed wire, machine guns and mines.

Machine guns were relatively new and deadly technologies.

They were ideal defensive weapons. They could fire up to 600 rounds a minute and were able to cut down lines of attackers, causing huge casualties

Trenches defended by these devastating weapons were impossible to capture.

The German Maxim Gun accounted for 90% of Allied victims in the Battle of the Somme 1916

Several new weapons were developed but none was successful in helping to achieve a breakthrough

The invention of the gas mask reduced the effectiveness of poisonous gas

The early tanks were slow and cumbersome, and many broke down. They were not used effectively until 1918

Trench warfare was a new kind of fighting. No one really knew how to win a war like this. So the generals fell back on the ideas they had used successfully in past wars, such as mass cavalry or infantry attacks

The French commander, Marshal Joffre, believed that the ‘spirit’ of the French soldiers would see them across No Man’s Land

The commanders on both sides persisted for three years with the belief that using large numbers of troops in an attack would achieve a breakthrough against machine guns and barbed wire